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[Page 28]
that the "bluff stakes" might be worked again we argued for some time that we were law-abiding Belgian farm hands, but failing to convince them we were marched off to the border guard room - where we still had a hope of bluffing them.
In contradiction to the many wild stories told of all manner of traps, watch dogs, and barbed wire, we happened to know that the border consisted of a patrol path with sentries patrolling to meet one another, posted at a distance of about a couple of hundred yards apart. We had been prepared to meet a patrol,but having passed the one in the hotel we didn't reckon on striking another so soon.
This happened about 11.30 that when we arrived at the reception room we were amongst the "early Catches" and it was certainly amusing to watch the "other arrivals" coming in. They were a nondescript lot and consisted of women food smugglers and civilians escaping from doing military
duty. Next morning we were up to be interrogated by the
Commandant. Although there was an English interpreter there he couldn't read the correspondence taken from us so that in pretending we were Belgians of the "Woloon" type (which happened to be a language not spoken generally amongst the Belgians) we had the staff in a quandary for a couple of hours -- everything said to us we "didn't understand". At last the Canadian was taken away on his own and given a kind of third degree examination, in which the cat came out of the bag and yes were found to be English prisoners of war.
On return to the reception room we found that one of the women food smugglers had also returned from "getting her medicine" - a sadder and considerably thinner person than when she went out. When she had had her pockets and various other concealing places full of contraband goods she had looked a fat old dame of fifty or so, but stripped of her goods she was a well built young women of twenty-six or thereabouts.
Before the morning had passed we were moved off under an escort a piece to the town gaol and lodged in separate "solitary" cells which were absolutely impenetrable.
On our journey to the gaol at Kalden Kirchen we had asked our sentries how far we were from Holland, we knew we were not very far, but it certainly hurt some when we were told the "promised land" was only ten minutes easy walk. So ended our three nights and two days "jaunt" through Rhineland.